


Wednesday

by Kytt



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Chess, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:15:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kytt/pseuds/Kytt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was 'Odin's Day' and Loki was feeling restless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamdictator (DreamDictator)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamDictator/gifts).



> So first off Warning: The following work contains less-than subtle mention of racism, and impolite terms relating to racism. It is used only to further the story, and with respect and as much sensitivity as I am able, given the subject at hand. If you are offended by such, then I would suggest that you stop reading now.
> 
> Second off: a very very HUGE thank you to my fantastic Editor and Beta - rikacain for being fabulous and patient and catching my tenses and missing nouns and occasional double verbs and working all kinds of HTML magic for me. 
> 
> Last and very much not least: This work is given with most humble gratitude to dreamdictator, as thanks for encouragement, supoort, and just generally being *awesome*!!, and because they said that they would like to see a drunken conversation between Fury and Loki, and though this monster got completely out of hand, and is I think, completely not what either of us intended, or envisioned here it is, and umm.. happy Tuesday!

It’s Wednesday – once called ‘Odin’s Day’, and Loki is restless. Not in his ‘usual’ – I’m bored, so I think I’ll destroy Manhattan, or fill Central Park with dry ice – sort of restlessness, that he's learned to deal with, but an itchy, insatiable, gets under his skin and just won’t let go, driving, impatient relentless force. The type of restlessness that will cause Loki to teleport Tony, pre-tied, into their rooms no matter the time of day, or what his CEO and occasional superhero boyfriend might otherwise be doing, and demonstrates for hours that the title 'Silvertongue' wasn't given him merely for his skills at lying, until Tony is shaking and begging, and Loki is so ready to fall apart himself, even though he's been the one doing.. doing.. and they're both spent, dripping with sweat and exhaustion, and Loki can’t tell where his flesh ends and Tony’s begins, and the restlessness backs off and things begin to make sense again. It’s the sort of restlessness that when it comes, drives Loki to provoke Thor into an a childish argument, that will ultimately leave them both bruised and bloody, and sometimes laughing, and the cold between them fades, at least for a little while, for all that the newly renovated and christened ‘Avengers Towers’ is half-destroyed. And Tony will sigh, even though he's never quite understood about his and Thor's need to fight, and entirely doesn’t approve of anyone leaving fist-shaped bruises on Loki's pale flesh, even if it is one of his best friends, but he'll pay the bill regardless without comment, because he knows all about Loki and his restlessness and it’s better the Tower, than Central Park or worse yet Manhattan.

Regretfully for Loki, and possibly Manhattan, that Wednesday the Tower was empty, save for himself, the ever-present Jarvis, and Bruce Banner, who had [has] barricaded himself in his lab, busy, ‘tinkering’. If ever directly confronted, Loki will lie, with eloquent, and practiced ease, denying wholeheartedly that he ever intentionally, and with any foresight avoids the soft-spoken scientist. However, a clever individual may]note that although both Loki and Bruce are both early risers with a near-desperate addiction to coffee, one rarely, if ever, finds them in the kitchen at the same time. The same may be said for the sprawling Stark library, particularly since Bruce and Loki are the only two to ever visit it with any sort of regularity – if one doesn't take into account Clint’s infrequent visits to sneak out the odd Austen or Brönte novel. In the end, regardless of direction that one took to arrive at the conclusion, Loki and Bruce, based on some un-spoken, silent pact, are ever rarely in the same place at the same time, unless the situation could not possibly be humanly (Asgardianly) avoided.

A tingle runs down Loki’s spine as he prowls the empty halls, seeking some sort of non-permanently destructive relief to the itch under his skin, from one of the many spider-webs of magic he’d left scattered about, advising him of a visitor to the tower. A particular visitor, that depending on the God’s mood he would [will] either seek out or avoid with nearly the same devotion as otherwise given solely to Bruce Banner. 

 

Less than a moment later, Jarvis’ voice sounds overhead. ‘Mr. Liesmith, Director Fury is on his way up. I have advised him that Mr. Stark is not presently on the premises, but the Director insists on waiting. I have directed him to the lounge.’

‘Hrm....’ Loki hums thoughtfully, and very nearly skips down the hall to the lounge, his restlessness slipping from his shoulders like so much morning dew.

‘Director Fury!’ the God exclaims, tossing open the double-doors like some 1940’s movie Diva. He gives the Director his third-best smile, in spite of, or possibly because they both know perfectly well, that there is nothing Fury would like better, than to pin Loki, like a fly under glass and find out what makes him tick. In his ever-present austerity of his trench coat, against the warm and welcoming earth-tones of the lounge the man stands out even more than usual. Loki recalls Tony having once asked Fury if he had a portable refrigeration system built into the coat, since he wore it year round, even in the scalding heat of a Manhattan August.  
At first glance, Fury seems engrossed in reviewing a game of chess in progress, and does not bother to look up at Loki’s theatrics. As a fellow show-man, Loki can’t help but admire the positioning – framed by the early-afternoon sun, standing over the tall pieces on the black and white board, Fury resembles nothing so much as a chess piece himself, the skirting of his coat reminiscent of the Queen’s, seducing the eye and mind to draw its inevitable conclusion. 

 

‘What an unexpected surprise,’ Loki continues, making no outward note to Fury’s lack of reaction. ‘I will be sure to tell Tony that you’d stopped by. Again. I know how utterly devastated he is, each and every time he misses one of your unscheduled visits.’ In the past month, Fury has ‘popped by’ no less than five times, each time to find Tony 'conveniently' absent.

‘That’s alright, he won’t miss me this time. I intend to wait right here, until Stark gets his shiny, metal ass back to this mad-house, you people call home. You don’t mind, do you?’ The Director looks up with a smile of his own, matching Loki tooth for tooth, as if saying, as far as I’m concerned you’re a murdering psychopath that tried to gut one of my best people, and the moment that ‘Good Guy’ mask of yours slips off, up I’m going to have you chained up like a dog, and back in a cage so fast you won’t know what hit you.

If anything, Loki’s smile grows broader. Oh he does like Fury, though he’ll never admit it to anyone. Especially not Tony. In fact, Loki has once or twice caught himself wondering how things might have been different had it not been for Tony, and what Fury might possibly look like stripped of his coat and convictions...

‘As you will.’ Loki wanders to one of the shelves, palming a discreet switch, watching as a wall opens on silent hydraulics. ‘May I tempt you with something from the bar?’ Loki offers, leaning ever so lightly on the mahogany surface, the merest twitch of his lips hinting, implying that he too, is presently ‘at’ the bar, and is a far greater temptation than the contents of all the slick, multi-coloured bottles combined.

‘I'm going to pass, but thanks all the same.’ Fury responds with surprising politeness, and Loki hasn’t quite forgotten a similar conversation, with a deceptively thin glass surface separating them, and Fury offering him magazines, rather than a drink. ‘A little early for me.’

Loki shrugs, and though his hands spend nearly the next ten minutes dancing over an array of bottles and shakers, in the end, he pours what is nothing more intoxicating than a very complex soda and lime into a heavily cut, crystal glass. The pouring and shaking and tossing allows him to retain a position from which he can easily observe Fury from the dark shade of his lashes. The man barely moves. He might be an obsidian statue, draped in leather. Neither does he start, when Loki carefully, deliberately, allows a chunk of ice to clink considerably louder than necessary against the side of his glass. As if he was expecting something along those lines, and there is nothing Loki hates more than being predictable. With somewhat less-forethought than usual, he collects his drink, snatches a book from the shelf at random, and falls in an elegant sprawl on the couch. 

Fury’s eyebrow twitches only slightly, when he realizes that Loki intends to stay. Loki likes Fury, or at least the _idea_ of Fury, but does not in particular enjoy spending time with him, not any more than he enjoys being alone with Bruce, and Fury knows it. Loki also knows, that purported “innocence' and 'good behavior' aside, if it was not for the constant threat of war between the realms, and the equally dangerous personal retribution of both Thor and Tony, Fury would gladly throw Loki into the deepest, darkest prison that SHIELD had access to.

 

An hour passes, and Loki is silently cursing himself for blindly grabbing books, all the while envisioning endlessly creative tortures for whom ever left that particular volume sitting on the shelf for him to grab. A glance at Fury shows that the man has moved from chessboard to stare out the window, and Loki will be damned if he’ll be the first to ‘blink’, as he forces himself back to the horrendous novel at hand.

Two hours. And Loki has topped up his drink, adding gin, hoping the alcohol will improve the story, and wonders why neither Edward nor Jacob have wrung the whiny human’s neck, and run off into the wilderness together. If nothing else, it might make for a more stimulating romance. Fury is still by the window, and Loki would swear the man hasn’t moved at all.

Three hours and Loki has gratefully finished the book, setting it aside with only a partially relieved sigh, causing Fury to glance up, acknowledging the God's presence for the first time in hours. He’s standing over the chessboard again.

Loki spares a glance at the board – Fury’s moved some pieces, continuing the game from where it had left off. Loki sees an opening, the barest potential of a trap lying in wait for the unsuspecting victim. ‘Black, in 7,' he says, in passing, again on route to the bar and more gin. 

Fury says nothing, but considers the board again, before gesturing widely – the throw of a gauntlet – to the seat opposite him, but Loki knows better than anyone that sometimes, silence is a lie too.

45 minutes later, the game ends on a stalemate, the two of them chasing one another around a nearly empty board. 

Loki pours another drink – tequila this time, hoping the bite will keep him focused, and keep the restlessness at bay. Fury has proven a more slippery opponent than he had initially anticipated, evading his carefully laid trap at the very last minute. More than once, Loki thought he had him, only to have the human frustratingly slip through his fingers.

When he returns, Fury has reset the board, this time giving Loki first move as white, eyebrow raised in invitation and unspoken challenge. Loki nods, takes a sip, and the war begins anew.

An hour later, the black king is trapped, and Fury acknowledges the loss with a bow of his head, tipping the king. A gracious loser to the end, Loki raises his empty glass in a toast, and stands to get another, again raising a brow in silent question. He's nothing if not a goodo host.

‘Scotch, neat.’ Fury replies, and names a brand. Unsurprisingly, it’s the same as Tony’s and Loki wonders briefly where the Director picked up the taste for 100 year old whiskey. 

It’s Loki’s turn to tip the king, and Fury raises his glass in tribute. An artful win, one Loki had not expected from so careful a player as Fury had shown himself in the two previous games. Though given what he already knew of Fury, the ruthless way in which he sacrificed pieces to achieve his goal, should not have come as a surprise. He files that carefully away, to review later, and perhaps to discuss with Tony. The Trickster stands, unfolding his long frame, discovering that he is starting to feel the slow, and not entirely unpleasant buzz of alcohol seeping through his veins. Scotch and tequila and gin, and Fury has nearly matched him drink for drink, so he should be starting to feel something too. This time when he returns to their table, he brings the bottles back with him. Tequila, and scotch.

Never one to pass up a Norn-handed opportunity, Loki resets the pieces, long-fingered hands moving perhaps a tad slower than entirely necessary. ‘May I ask you something, Director?’ he queries with exaggerated casualness.

‘You can always ask,’ Fury responds, and tops-up his own drink, his movements lacking the over-exaggeration of someone who’s noticed themselves getting drunk, but Loki’s ever watchful eye takes note of the exacting perfection that’s missing as Fury fills his glass. 

‘Thank you Director, and do please stop me if I over-step the bounds of polite conversation and it becomes too personal a topic. Some of the... complexities of Midgardian niceties still somehow, manage to elude me,’ Loki smiles beatifically as Fury’s brow furrows in disbelief, because yes, Midgardian ‘niceties’ are about as complicated as the mating habits of the three-toed sloth. He thinks he knows what Loki’s going to ask, but Loki has spent millennia being unpredictable, and he’s not about to stop now. ‘I have been doing some reading of Midgardian history, and I find myself wondering, by what singular action did you garner the attentions of a man as important in his time, as Howard Stark?'

Loki sits back in his chair, enjoying Fury’s momentary discomfiture. It's there, if you know to look for it, in the tightness around the one eye. He didn't need to spell out what he was really asking, he doesn’t need to, Fury can read it right there between the lines – how did a black man, in the 1940's United States, where segregation and racism was fed with the morning cereal, was able to so 'rise above his stature' as to join an organization such a Shield. Magazine indeed, Director, and did Fury think that Loki would ever forget? Or forgive? 

‘Why, I’d be happy to answer that Mr. Laufeyson, just as soon as you tell me what really caused the enmity between yourself and Odin – and don't go feeding me the usual horseshit line about your being upset over being adopted. You're not a stupid man -’

 

'God', Loki mutters, and earns himself another glare.

 

'You must have known, or at least begun to suspect that you weren't like all the other 'kids'. So what was it?.. You were planning the Jotun invasion of Asgard, and attempted theft, long before Thor's near-coronation, and dumb-assed trip into Jotunheim. What made you so hate Odin, that you wanted to see him fall? Couldn't have just been the 'usual' Daddy issues could it?'

Loki resists the temptation to growl. He knows Fury is bating him, just as he was bating Fury. It's just another chess game, and he's not about to lose. He doesn’t leap for Fury’s throat and stain Tony’s leather couch with pain and blood. He laughs and takes a drink, and moves his piece, and stares Fury down before he moves his own in turn.

They play in silence for a while, and Loki doesn’t look up from the board, eventually almost forgetting that he is plays against a human opponent – the only one other than Jarvis that plays near his level is Natasha, and neither of them are willing to risk a game of chess, and what that might reveal about their thinking patterns to one another, when Fury's voice half-startles him aware. 

‘I lucked out,’ Fury eventually says, draining half his own glass off the bat. Loki lowers his lashes, briefly impressed with the man’s capacity for alcohol. ‘I followed my brother to war. Back then, there weren't a lot of honest, paying jobs offered to black men, and the army was one of them. Even so, we had our squads, our own commanders, but they were all black, niggers just like me.' Fury puts an inflection on the insult, but to Loki it's just another word he read in a history book, like 'combustion engine' or 'fuck'.

 

'It's not a bad thing, being a sergeant in a squad of your own men. I was making enough that could send most of it home to my mother, and after my brother disappeared, she really needed the help. Most of the men I was serving with did that. Most of them had families back home– old folks, or younger sisters and brothers. Some had young wives and little ones too, not that they ever got to see them. Nooo.. our squad, and those like ours, were sent to the front just a soon as we passed the most basic of basic training. No need to keep them darkies 'home' where it was safe. I helped out some of the boys by writing letters for them – I was one of the few that could read and write, most of the rest couldn't. Probably was the only reason I was promoted to sergeant when I was. Likely what saved my life. Our squad was taken by Hydra. Non-com that I was, I was still the closest thing we had to an officer so they left me alive, to ask me questions. The rest of my boys weren't so 'lucky'. Out of a squad of 14, I was the only one to survive and subsequently be rescued by Captain America. You now how that story ended. Lucky for me too, that white boy happened to be in my neighborhood, because if weren't for him, no one else in Uncle Sam's army would've spent a bent cent to haul my nigger ass out of there.’ Loki can almost tasted the familiar, well-aged bitterness in Fury’s voice. It’s the same sullen resentment he hears in his ears on the few occasions he speaks of his.. Odin. 

‘I spent the rest of the war following him around, right up until he vanished.’ Fury continues. ‘When Howard Stark was putting together a team to go looking for him, I volunteered, and the rest, as they say is history.’

 

'Was that where you lost your eye?' Loki asks finally.

 

Fury shakes his head, and tells him. It's not what he expected. It's not what anyone expected, still it does explain a great deal.

 

Fury's honesty, or the alcohol, or possibly the unexpected pleasure of finding an opponent he cannot easily trick, or intimidate or simply out-maneuver, or maybe just the need to talk, because someone has finally asked – Tony never asks. Just waits for Loki to tell him things - causes Loki to start talking, and once he starts, he finds himself unable to stop, as if a floodgate of ancient hurts and slights has opened, and will not close no matter how thoroughly he try.

‘There is, as you know, place for but a single ruler in Asgard, and although as Odin told both Thor and I when we were still quite young, we were both born to rule, it has always been known that Thor would be ultimately crowned as King. Asgard is a land of warriors, and on discovering that I had no thirst for battle, I found a different manner in which I could ultimately serve my brother and my King. Did you know that there are, contrary to Midgardian beliefs, less than a handful of mages ever born to Asgardians? And of that handful born, all but one were women? Magery has thus become a woman's art, another reason I suspect for my … for Odin’s great disappointment in me, but in spite of that I strove to learn all that I could of the gifts granted me, to hone my magery as thoroughly as Thor honed any of his weapons. If I would stand by my brother's as councilor and aide, well then I should be the greatest in all the reams.' Loki says bitterly, taking a drink try and cover his expression. 

 

'I spent months, years, sifting, searching, digging through ancient texts, learning the laws, the histories, the random, half-completed spells that mages might sometimes draw in the margins of their notebooks amongst snatches of poetry and lore. We don't tend to keep spell-books – not as you think of them at least. One never knows where one might run across a useful incant. Thus I became a greater expert of Asgardian history than any, save perhaps Odin himself.

 

'Consider then my surprise, when in this search for knowledge, I came across the buried, ancient tales of Odin. The Trickster. The Liar. The thief who stole from dwarves and maidens alike long before I ever came to be called Liesmith and Silvertongue. Did you know that Odin, the fierce, one-eyed ruler of the Gods of Asgard was the one responsible for bringing the gift of poetry to the nine realms? Did you know his name also means 'Wisdom'? Neither did I. But I was overjoyed. At last... finally did my 'Father' and I could have a common thread. A bond that did not require me to drink in his mead-hall with Thor and the rest of his mindless thugs, or go hunting after some poor, brainless creature, who's only crime was it was large, and ferocious enough to attract my brother's attention. How great was my relief to find that I was not so very different after all, but that Thor and I were merely the two sides of our Father, a man far more complex than I had ever given him credit to be. I should have realized then, that Odin was nothing more than just another troublesome, meddling, thieving cur, who lost his eye, because he knew too much and yet wanted more!' Loki lifts up his glass, ready to toss it into the cold fireplace and realizes that he is standing, and has already given away too much. He sits, draining the remaining liquid, before setting the glass carefully back down on the table.

'When I confronted Odin with what I had found, believing in my great naïveté that this shared secret might draw us closer together as Father and Son, that there might finally be, at least a single person in the House of Odin that might understand what it was that _I_ wanted of the world… He bid he hide, destroy the legends and never speak of them again. It was not seemly, my noble ‘Father’ says to me, that the women and men of Asgard should learn of their King’s youthful mishaps and weaknesses – weaknesses he called them... his thirst to know more, his poetry, his magecraft a weakness, and thus they must be my weaknesses as well - and the matter, would never be spoken of again.

I realize now, that this similarity, more than any other single reason, is responsible... if you will, for my retaining my life, after facing the court of Odin. Odin sees in me himself, or else what could have been, had he not been tempered his with the weight of Kingship and my mother's love. It is why he both fears and claims to love me so. I am himself. To Odin I will always be the mirror that he fears to gaze too long into. And I will never forgive him that.' Loki refills his drink, and takes an unguarded knight, harming his opponent as he is unable to otherwise harm Odin.

 

'So...' Fury slowly drawls. 'Poetry you say?'

 

Loki looks up, startled. Of all the questions he could have anticipated Fury asking, Odin's gift of poetry was the least. He chuckles... poetry. The chuckle becomes louder, it grows, an uncontrollable bubble that comes bursting out of his chest with a near hysterical sob, and he's laughing, laughing like he rarely ever laughs, until there are tears pouring from his eyes, and across from him is Fury laughing too? True laughter, as they say, must really be contagious.

 

'Oh I wish that you could have read it!' Loki gasps out between continuing bouts of giggles. 'It was genuinely, some of the worst written verse that I have ever had the displeasure to come across. It is only by Midgard's saving grace, that Odin's gift of inspiration found root within the hearts and minds of your more clever skalds and the nine realms were saved from Odin's inept attacks on literature.'

 

'That bad, was it?' Fury asks.

 

'You have no idea!' Loki stutters, and standing places a hand on his chest, as proud as any Laureate about to recite an award winning work, reading off a piece of horrendous doggerel that would send a 3'rd grader cringing for his life.

 

This sets off another round of giggles, and by the end they face each other, smiling. Genuinely. Masks for the moment lifted.

 

'The other men, you said had wives, families,' Loki finally says, catching his breath, 'What about you? Did the indomitable Nick Fury, ever lose his heart?' 

 

Fury lets the silence stretch between them, and Loki wonders if he's finally managed to shatter this extremely tentative, and unspoken truce that's unexpectedly grown between them.

 

'There was someone,' he says finally. 'Once. A long time ago. She was a Hydra double-agent, and raised our sun to kill me. It was,' he adds. 'A very long time ago. What about you? Before Stark? Was there, anyone?'

 

Loki takes a long moment to consider his answer. Before Stark there were.. some. A skald that Loki thought himself in love with, with Thor's golden hair and green eyes to match his own. The skald left, not long after Loki's fall from grace, unwilling to allow his name to mix with that of a disgraced prince. Faceless, nameless bodies filled his bed, before and after. Some, shared conquests with Thor, failed attempts of his brother's to draw them closer, by dragging Loki to some inn, and planting doxies on his knee. Doxies it seemed, were as susceptible to flattery and verse as skalds, for all that they weren't nearly as pretty.

 

'So.. what's the attraction, for you I mean?' Fury asks. 'I can see it from Stark's point of view – he's a danger to himself. If there's a bad decision to be mad [made] within a 100k radius of him, he'll make it, and you're about as as bad as a decision that comes along in a lifetime. But why Stark?'

 

Why Stark? Loki wonders. Has wondered ever since he and Tony found themselves locked together in this.. this.. whatever it was that they were calling themselves this week. Initially he thought, or told himself at least, that he seduced Tony for the sheer discomfiture it caused Thor, and knowing just how much it both bothered and annoyed him to see his friend and comrade partnered – as Thor would blushingly put it – with his mostly unrepentant, occasionally evil, disobedient, younger brother, whom he professes to love in spite of all his many faults. But then Tony would make a brilliant observation concerning the misleading nature of time as a constant, while stirring his morning coffee, or kiss him, or smile from across the room, the lazy sort of smile that started as a promise in the golden depths of his eyes, that makes the God of Ancient Chaos want to destroy any other living thing that has ever had that smile turned upon them, to hide and protect Tony from any that might ever dare lay harm to this man, that makes Loki wish that he can cast off his own immortal Godhood, so he will not exist in a world bereft of Tony Stark. 

 

Loki hasn't used the ‘L’ word yet, even though it’s been months, even inside the sprawling chaos of his mind. He will.. he thinks.. he hopes.. eventually. For the moment, all that really matters is that Tony knows how how he feels about him, just as he is equally certain of Tony's feelings. 

 

'He pushes me,' Loki finally says. 'And he is unafraid. Even when he should be terrified, he spits fear in the eye and just keeps right on pushing. He challenges me. He forces me to question.. everything. Everything I have ever believed. Everything I have ever done. He.. makes me want to make him proud. He makes me want to be a better man.'

 

'You love him.' Fury pronounces with a surprising finality.

 

'I love him.' Loki admits, finally to himself, sitting there half-drunk, over an un-finished game of chess, with a man who is the closest thing he has to a mortal enemy, Loki finally uses the 'L' word and finds that he likes it.

 

Three hours later when Tony finally returns, exhausted, frustrated, and bored, as only a day-long board (really they aught to call them bored meetings) meeting can leave him, he finds Nick Fury standing by the window of his lounge, calmly observing a half-started chess game in progress. He also finds his immortal, and often immoral, boyfriend sprawled on the couch with a glass of tequila in one hand, and a ridiculously bad, teenage novel in the other.

 

'Ahhh.. Tony you're home. The Director was just waiting for you. I'll leave you two, to it now, shall I?'

 

'Director,' Loki nods to Fury, as he stands, and walks slowly from the room.

 

'Mr. Laufeysson.' 

 

'Try to not be long,' Loki whispers in Tony's ear, just before he kisses him, long and slow and dirty, careless of the fact that they are not alone, and that he, Loki, is the one constantly arguing against Tony's inexplicable need for very Public Displays of Affection. 'I missed you. I love you.' And walks out, leaving a gasping Anthony Stark, and a quietly smirking Director Fury in his wake.

 

Wednesdays are no longer a day of barely controlled restlessness for Loki. Wednesdays are the days that he eludes his many handlers and meets Fury, who also, in spite of the collected apoplexy that both the Avengers and the entire staff of SHIELD, experienced the first time that he fell falls off the radar, arrives alone. They meet in a little cafe, populated almost exclusively by old men, of Italian and Russian descent, in a forgotten corner of Manhattan, where no one tends to pay them a great deal of attention, except when they ask for more ice. Loki brings tequila. Fury brings scotch.

 

No one has ever tried to ask what they do when they meet. If anyone ever had, either Fury or Loki will have told them – they talk about the opera. They talk of baseball and movies and the visiting pandas at the zoo. When the game is on, they talk about soccer. They talk of books they have both read. They do not not discuss Tony or Odin or Hydra. They do not talk of love. They play a great deal of chess

**Author's Note:**

> According to old Norse legends Odin really is responsible for bringing poetry to the world. And depending on which legends you listen to, in his 'younger' days, he was as bad, if not a worse Trickster than Loki. And yes, his name really means wisdom.
> 
> In writing this I scoured cannon from both comics and movies looking for things that fit. Considerable 'artistic' lisence, as you can tell was given, and I wholeheartedly offer my appology for its over-use.


End file.
